Lifted from the comments, a technological feat:

Traffic cameras in Chicago disproportionately ticket Black and Latino motorists.

Readers are invited to spot the word that’s doing the heavy lifting. It appears 1o times in the article quoted above, excluding variations.

The red-light and speed cameras are, we’re told, “distributed roughly evenly among the city’s Black, Latino and white neighbourhoods.” Despite which, “the ticketing rate for households in majority-Black ZIP codes” is “more than three times that of households in majority-white areas.” And so, explanations are searched out, including the width of a given road, the effect of passing vacant lots, and the geographical distribution of grocery stores. “Structural racism” is of course invoked, a phenomenon that apparently includes ticketing cyclists who choose to ride on the pavement, illegally.

Those presented as victims of injustice, of “racial inequity,” include Mr Rodney Perry, whose photograph accompanies the piece, and who, in a single year, has received eight tickets for speeding and three for running red lights. The article appears not to have had room to include the views of those injured or bereaved by Chicago’s law-breaking motorists, despite an eye-widening spike in accidents, fatalities, and hit-and-run crashes. Nor, it seems, was there room to consider the possible effect of endless, widespread excuse-making for antisocial behaviour, and its role in making such behaviour more likely, not less.

See also the words disparate, disparity and disparities, which occur no fewer than 22 times.

Update, via the comments:

Rafi notes the article’s supposed candidates for our sympathy – the best that could be mustered, presumably – and adds, “They chose poorly.” Well, as a pin-up for victimhood, a basis for our collective weeping, Mr Perry is a, shall we say, suboptimal choice. But apparently, we are expected to sympathise with Mr Perry, our habitual lawbreaker, and to indulge his excuses, on account of his difficulty paying the $700 in fines that resulted from his repeated law-breaking. As if the financial consequences were inexplicable and somehow unforeseeable. Though it seems to me that not being in the best position to pay the fines that normally result from such law-breaking is a pretty good reason to avoid said law-breaking – specifically, repeatedly running red lights and thereby endangering other people’s lives.

At which point, it’s perhaps worth noting that many of the, as it were, racially insensitive cameras are located near schools.

Another candidate for our not-entirely-suited-to-the-job file:

The elderly couple ordered a “carefully budgeted” $50 of groceries to be delivered to their home last Sunday… Nothing was amiss until they went outside to meet the driver, Tara, for fear that she might struggle with her vehicle in their snow-covered driveway. When they opened the front door, Tara yelled at them… while rocking her vehicle back and forth in the driveway.

It turned out the issue wasn’t snow. 

The ostensible cause of Tara’s mental crisis can be viewed here.

Update, via the comments:

The individual in question, the one swollen with righteousness, is no longer employed.

Via I, Hypocrite, via Darleen. Also, open thread.

Over at The College Fix, Dave Huber ponders the complications of being woke while simultaneously having a good time:

In [Swarthmore College student paper] The Phoenix, economics major Sameer Halepoto points to a pre-Thanksgiving party, hosted by the Swarthmore Queer Union, Swarthmore African Student Association, Swarthmore [Hispanic and Latino organisation] ENLACE, and the Swarthmore African-American Student Society, which had filled up rather quickly.

Filled up quickly. Must be the fun crowd.

Halepoto says “typical [Swarthmore] parties include an outsized number of white students (many of whom are athletes), making it harder for marginalised groups to feel welcome.” As a result, party organisers blared a repeating electronic message through speakers which warned that white people had to leave.

Vibeslayer. Or, as Mr Halepoto, our fretfully woke student columnist, puts it,

As the number of students at the party swelled, however, the organisers decided to clean house over fears of overcrowding. Specifically, it was time to kick out the white people. What followed was a message blaring through the speakers from Google Translate that looped for several minutes on end — telling white students to leave. By the time the message stopped playing, the party’s racial demographics had shifted significantly.

Mr Halepoto goes on to share his fashionable (and fashionably unsubstantiated) belief that being gay or brown or sort-of brown is a state of being “marginalised,” even on a modern, upscale, super-progressive campus, where annual tuition fees are north of $70,000. Being so cruelly downtrodden, such put-upon persons are, we’re told, entitled to “safe spaces.” In contrast, “white people” are defined, rather breezily, as a “non-marginalised group,” all party-going to the contrary. How white students who also happen to be gay should navigate student parties without risking looped and amplified racial scolding, and subsequent ejection, is not made entirely clear.

The dishonesty, I mean.

Speaking of which, he’s doing it for the students, you know. And he sometimes turns up to class in full drag. To make it a “safe space.”

Homeschool pic.twitter.com/ZJFj0TvxAi

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 6, 2021

Update, via the comments:

Regarding the second item, Jen quips, “Liar, liar, pants on fire.”

Ah, but you see, it’s “a place for them, by them,” while clearly being all about him and entirely his idea, and entirely dependent on his preferences on any given day. So, sometimes it’s full drag, and sometimes just big earrings, nail polish and wacky tart shoes. To make the children feel “safe.” I somehow doubt that any pupils or parents who find this educator’s behaviour, shall we say, distracting or not entirely reassuring, will be indulged anything like as much as he expects to be.

Update 2:

I suppose the above raises the question of whether you think schoolchildren should be compelled to participate, daily, as a captive audience, in a teacher’s gender-bending psychodrama. Complete with beard, make-up, and ‘fuck-me’ hooker shoes. What matters, we’re told, is that he gets to “look how I wanna look” during office hours, on other people’s time, while teaching other people’s children, and while supposedly setting an example of adult behaviour. And, luckily for him, farcical self-indulgence is just so woke, baby. “I’m here to recruit you,” quips he.

According to our progressive educator, the spectacle of him parading around the classroom in clownish make-up and women’s clothes, his beard offset with stiletto heels – which he just happens to enjoy wearing – will somehow create a “safe space” for gay schoolchildren. All of whom, apparently, aspire to be narcissistic cross-dressers with terrible taste. As someone who was once a gay schoolboy, back in a darker, more primitive age, I have to say, the sight of my chunky, rather stern German teacher striding about the classroom in Joker makeup and five-inch stilettos would not have been particularly affirming, no matter how many Pride flags he waved about while doing it.

Update 3:

In juvenile detention, she would write “really radical raps” that rattled her supervisors.

Why, yes, I am reading the Guardian. Where the paper’s Janine Israel is positively gushing over aboriginal rapper Barkaa and her “politically potent” music.

The Malyangapa Barkindji woman… is on the verge of releasing her debut EP, Blak Matriarchy,

You know you want to.

Based in south-west Sydney, Barkaa takes her moniker from the Barkindji word for the Darling River. She comes across as warm and humble,

Warm and humble. An interesting choice of words. And followed almost immediately by:

Earlier this year she played the Sydney Opera House forecourt, the lights of the harbour stretched out before her as she performed her song Bow Down: “They used to look down on me / Look who’s looking up now. Bow down.”

Regarding said ditty, our mistress of the surly pose and monotonous loop informs us,

Bow Down is one of my favourite tracks to perform because a lot of people growing up [were like]: ‘Oh you’re not going to be much, you’re just going to be a lowlife, you’re just going to be a junkie, you’re not going to get anywhere, you’re just going to be in and out of prison.’ It’s kind of like: middle fingers up to them.

Same article, seconds earlier:

Born Chloe Quayle, the 26-year-old rapper was a former teenage ice addict who did three stints in jail – during her last, five years ago, she gave birth to her third child.

Despite three children, no father, or fathers, are mentioned. Well. Perhaps we should move on.